108 
CHARLES F. RING. 
If, again, as some writers claim that symptoms of leprosy 
were mingled with those of the plague, it would only seem to 
show—in our estimation—that the lepers were susceptible to the 
new poison, and were suffering and dying from it—and if, as 
some German writers hold, that lepra had begun to disappear be¬ 
fore the appearance of the epidemic—the only cpnclusion avail¬ 
able is, that the new disease helped to hasten its demise. But, be 
this as it may, whether leprosy had begun to disappear or not, of 
one thing we are satisfied, viz.: that the closure of the many 
thousand leper houses outside the gates of cities in France, not 
many years after the epidemic broke out, was due rather to the 
lepers dying from the new plague, than to its metamorphosis into 
and thus giving rise to it. 
Jalir, before us, assumed this same position. He says : “ What¬ 
ever may have been the pathological nature of that remarkable 
epidemic, it is certain that, at a period when the world was shaken 
by the mighty invention of a Guttenberg, and the old creeds and 
institutions began to totter to their foundations, the nations of 
Europe were visited by a terrible febrile convulsion, that swal¬ 
lowed up one of the most ancient plagues as by a volcanic erup¬ 
tion, and substituted in its place a new and desolating disease.” 
— [Ibid, p. 286.] 
The theory of the colonization of syphilis from America yet 
remains to be considered. Although this is no longer to any ex¬ 
tent held at the present day, yet it may be well to notice it here 
—by way of completeness—in passing. 
Ilenouard says : Unhappily for the veracity of the Spanish 
historian ” (meaning Oviedo), “ it is certain, from authentic testi¬ 
mony, that the pox broke out in Naples towards the close of the 
year 1493, or in the beginning of the following year, that is, two 
years before the arrival of the Spanish fleet. * * * If there 
were other proofs needed to invalidate the narrative of Oviedo, 
we might add that he exhibits in many places a manifest preju¬ 
dice against the inhabitants of the New World. He likens them 
to the Canaanites, and the Spaniards to the people of God, so as 
to give a color of justice to the atrocities which he inflicted upon 
the unhappy Indians during his government.” 
Other late writers have pretended that it was on the first re- 
